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Meditations

The Flying Tiger

Mark has been going on about how there is no street food in Vancouver, but the other night, we found a restaurant that has taken street food inside. The Flying Tiger has just recently opened, but its fusion of Filipino, Indian and Japanese street food had the place filled.
Maybe the review in the Georgia Straight got people going there too…

We walked into The Flying Tiger at about 7pm to find out that the only seats available were at the bar looking directly into the kitchen. Perfect! Sort of like a street vendor at a Hawker’s Market in Singapore where you can watch them make your food right in front of you. We were lucky to get those two seats; the door was lined up for the rest of the night.

The chef, Tina Fineza, had such a calm aura around her. Impressive considering the growing line of tickets she faced as the night progressed. As she called out dishes to her team, we witnessed the preparation of a delicious variety of dishes.

For me, the highlight of our dinner was the duck crepes. We made our own little wraps that resembled the Peking Duck wraps, but it was pulled duck confit. The most interesting part was the mound of fresh mint, Thai basil, jicama and cucumber to add to the wraps. Amazing flavours were running around in my mouth!

We also had to try the lumpia. Now, this is a hard one to order in a restaurant, because NO ONE can make it like my mom! So, it wasn’t really fair to Tina. How can I say it is better than my mom’s? Fortunately, they were very different than my mom’s so I can safely say that they were really good.

Mark loved the Hawker Street Noodles. The flavours were just right – just what you’d expect from a street vendor. Every dish we had was piping hot. No dishes were left under heat lamps! And, Chef Tina made sure the dishes came out one at a time, in the right order. The pacing was a little off as we had to wait a while for our last dish, but she started out light, and ended with the more robust dishes.

Overall, we had good eats at The Flying Tiger. We had about 5 dishes and a bottle of wine for just under $100, so not too expensive, but not street-food pricing!! I’m definitely going back – there are just too many other interesting dishes on that menu to pass up.